European and International Affairs

French President Macron has, with his speech in the Sorbonne University on 26.9.2017, mentioned some aspects on Europe which, because of the scope of the subject, have been somehow neglected in other EU countries but merit to be discussed in a broader sense. One of them was European defense policy. There are indeed two axes we have to follow in this respect: one is the permanent attempt of withdrawal of the United States, despite some NATO displays in the Baltic region and Eastern Europe, and another is terrorism in all its facets. It is evident that the EU – and not the Member States – has to fight the financing of terrorism and of terrorist cyber propaganda. Some Member States do not take part in these activities, not because they are close to terrorism – no, they are too nationalistic to cede necessary competences to the EU.

The objective of Macron in the field of defense was and is to create a Europe of defense which is able to act on its own behalf, if necessary, and thus completing NATO. Macron spoke of „progress of historical dimensions“ within the last months; indeed things are developing positively since Great Britain is not taken too serious any more, because of Brexit. UK has of course strong, experienced armed forces, but not the will to enhance a Common Defense Policy of the EU, although any one of its Member States would be too weak to do it alone. And NATO might be not proactive enough, with a US President who first had denied Art. 5 NATO Agreement (the solidarity clause) and with Turkey permanently moving away from NATO. What remains is the EU alone – one has to see this clearly.

Only in June 2017 the European Defense Fund had been created, for a permanent cooperation, for a financing of defense research. above all – we have more than a dozen different guns in the EU, and a myriad of fighter planes, double capacities in navy vessels etc. A lot of money could be spent in defense policy. With this fund it will be like the Schengen Agreement: This was launched by five Member States only, and a couple of years later it became a part of the Amsterdam Treaty for the whole EU.

Macron has also proposed a „common strategic defense culture“ The EU has not been able to act together in a convincing way. Macron sees traditional differences in cultural, historical, parliamentary and general political issues. Indeed, this won’t be changed from one day to the next, but if you don’t tackle this problem the EU would never have a common defense policy.

Macron also proposed a common defense budgetfor the EU. This could include all the budgets of the Member states plus the one of the EU (which until now is rather small, of course). At first, this does not need a formal approval power of the EU institutions above Member States‘ defense budgets. But a permanent synopsis will create a permanent discussion about the 2% target, about efficiency or inefficiency, about common purchases etc.

This might be a very realistic point of Macron’s speech. Starting informally with a kind of declaratory new budget part in the EU, which may even lie to ist biggest part outide of the EU institutions, is a first step which may be completed later. In the sense of what Ursula von der Leyen, German Minister of Defense, had said, namely that a European Army cannot come overnight but in very many small steps.

In this context, Macron had also proposed – and promised for the own French armed forces – to include into all the Member States‘ armies people from the other Member States. This should be done not according to citizenship but to the country where Europeans live (and to more than basic lanuage knowledge, evidently). This element of a common defense culture should come to reality at the beginning of the next decade – like then in a EU-wide common attempt of intelligence. To bridge the gap between European vision and reality in this respect, he advocated a European Academy of Intelligence. Of course, this is necessary, if you see how the existing mini-structures are treated by most of the Member States.

We need some courage – like the French President – to propose a nucleus of policies which may then become larger and larger. European defense policy is one of them – for defense policy reasons, but also for spending the necessary money, and not more. And of course for the most noble task of armed forces in Europe: to exist in order to be never deployed for their historical purposes.

There will be no Brexit. This is my, as a lawyer I can say this, provisional legal opinion. But not only legal, if you commit a general system analysis. Brexit is an objective impossibility, and all this for the following reasons:

From the beginning, I was astonished with what kind of childish stubbornness Brexit was implemented into the British Government’s activities. I know- also in parallel from my own political history – that this was and is done in context with inner-party power struggles, beginning with a totally wrong estimation of the relation between inner-party Tory wings and the population’s position, by former Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron, and this is the danger of several years being in power at the same position, has lost a lot of ground contact, like Chirac in France when he decided to hold a Referendum on the EU Constitution a year ahead of when this was held – a year where he easily could lose a lot of approval, when an unholy alliance brought this Referendum to failure. The same thing two times (!) in the Netherlands, when first Prime Minister Balkenende, the guy who looked like Harry Potter, ordered the second Referendum in NL after the first around 350 years or so ago, also on the EU Constitution, which was lost against an unholy alliance, too. The second (or third) Dutch Referendum was lost, when the Government submitted the Ukraine Association Agreement with the EU to a public vote. Not very many people have seen the text of this Agreement nor discussed it. A Referendum is always, in open, democratic societies, in EU countries above all, an invitation to kick the respective government in their ass, and nothing more. Why then some politicians, most at the fringes of the political spectrum, advocate a Referendum in questions where they expect a popular outcry against any government activities? However, we all live in parliamentary democracies, with parliamentary committees where many questions can be discussed and solved, and public hearings for these committees can be held, etc. I took (actively!) part in British discussions in 1971/1972, right after school when I was invited for several panel discussions by Young Conservatives (and confronted with arguments against the then EEC, like „at one breakfast with a Rhine Army officer’s relative near Münster/Germany one foul egg was served…“). But I think there was more discussion about joining the EEC then, than before the Brexit Referendum to leave the EU.

Anyway, it was a clear deficit by the Tories and their protagonists in leading the debate before the Brexit vote. And nobody in the Government made any clear plans what to do if Brexit were approved – The UK suffers still of this disease, if you see and hear the leading politicians of this country, like David Davis.

Regarding the „system analysis“ arguments, I cannot imagine that British citizens today and collectively are, excuse me, so stupid to vote for their economic down-spiralling, for their loss of influence within or towards the EU, for not being taken serious anymore in the EU, for their world-wide loss of influence (as proven by Theresa May’s and BoJo’s travel & talk attempts in the last months). Everything said in this respect is a big lie, or perehaps „fake news“. And the gain of „control“ to everybody else in the world, by tougher immigration policy also to the EU, which is expected as a tool of new British nationalism means self-isolation and again loss of influence.

And now the British press is fuller than ever with qualified opinions (Nick Clegg) on how to exit the Brexit. British political culture may manage this U-turn, with a lot of what has lacked since 2016: the typical British pragmatism (which lacks totally in the negotiations with the EU). Forecasting attempts in policies should never be linear – like: 1 x voted for Brexit (and this with 37% of the population only!) – there will be the Brexit. This, by the way, is more immanent to a dictatorship, which is not applicable for Great Britain. Linear moves would permit the extrapolation (or intrapolation) of political circumstances, based on a population which is immune to learning. I hope this is not the case with the British. We have already a lot of UK citizens who changed their citizenship, and they are now Germans, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc. And lots of EU citizens have returned to the EU since the vote, and new ones hesitate to go to Britain. This is not typical for an element of a European open society.

In this situation, it cannot be a miracle that Theresa May seems to commit many mistakes. One of the next ones would be not to publish the legal opinions kept in secret until now about the Brexit and its implications – they seem to be good for a U-turn of the Government. While we are in a situation when senior Brussels personalities tell in private „OMG, let the British go, the sooner the better…“, this is clearly the result of the chaotic, unprepared, and probably unfeedbacked negotiation position of UK. It would take the Brexit negotiations with the EU into a year-long, maybe 5 – 8 years lasting negotiation nightmare. In the time between June 2016 and March 2017 any state of the world could and would have been better prepared than H.M’s Government.

Once more: to keep the advantages for UK in the EU Single Market which is and will be seen as necessary for the country, will require a U-turn towards the Brexit. It will take several generations until the British will be as „European“ as the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Germans etc., but there may be a new agreement between the EU and Great Britain about the continuation of the EU Membership. Until now, I have thought, this can be achieved only by a change of government (which does not necessary mean a Labour one) and a significant change of public opinion. Now I believe it can be started by a change within the Government This – or the other solution – seems today more likely than ever. Which leads me to the cautiously optimistic opinion that there will be no Brexit at all. If UK ask the European Council to vote for an extension of the March 2019 deadline, it probably will be granted, as first step. However, if the British would come back to the EU, a (francophone) senior Brussels personality has to be quoted: „Alors, s’ils reviennent, c’est la merde que recommence…„

EN / There is a new blog from now, on questions around the European legal cooperation form of the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG). The Website http://www.ewiv.eu, will be enriched significantly. At the same time our „F.A.Q.“ column on this Website will be kept on a more topical basis and also subject to readers‘ feedback and participation. The European EEIG Information Centre wants, at the one hand, to inform its European readership (there are German, English, French and possible other languages in the blog) in an equal and topical way. At the same time the Centre which undoubtedly has a lot of competence can pass on just this competence.

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The Ukraine conflict is sometimes on the way of being forgotten, unfortunately. Except when the separatists proclaim a state „Little Russia“ in Donezk and Luhansk, what even the Moscow paper Kommersant brings to a smile and to say that „[this] proclamation … will not bring any big consequences“ (Kommersant, 19.7.2017). Indeed, if the Kremlin would support this „state“, then all Western negiotation partners would have to consider this as withdrawal from the Minsk Agreements. This would kill the Moscow expectation for a certain working relationship to the USA and above all to the EU and its Member States. But this is not even worth a substantial reporting in European media.

But what is worthwhile and should be repeated again and again is the strange way of „rule of law“ followed by the Donezk and Luhansk separatist administrations. This includes, besides everything else, also slave work in the form of forced labour for prisoners of these two „Peoples Republics“.They have to work, if they do not want to be thrown into a kind of dungeon, and they are not paid at all. They just get some tea and cigarettes. With their unvoluntary „assistance“ their wood chucking, welding, quarrying and other very hard work, they make money for the budget of the two „Peoples Republics“ (or of „Little Russia“, as now they call themselves) – amounting to approx. 500.000 EUR per month. There are, following the investigations of the up to 10.000 prison inmates now many illegally in prison. They have done their time, or they should have been in freedom due to a 2014 amnesty by the Ukrainian President. But this latter seems not to concern the separatists, as they do not accept decisions by the Ukrainian Government or state institutions.

(Map pf prison camps in The „Peoples‘ Republic of Luhansk, by the East Ukraine Human Rights Group, which helped to reveal These practices)

It is clear that these „gulags“ in nowadays‘ Europe, in an otherwise modernizing state of Ukraine, are not made without – at least – the toleration by the Russian authorities. Like in e.g. Transnistria, another „frozen conflict“ area, the Kremlin pays for most of the budget of the „Peoples republics“ – big Russia pays for „Little Russia“.

The prison camps have been revealed by Sabine Adler, one of the most experienced journalists of public radio Deutschlandfunk in Germany. (see her report, with interviews and photos, under http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/zwangsarbeit-in-ostukrainischen-separatistengebieten-gulags.724.de.html?dram:article_id=390676; there are also PDF links on that page in English and Russian language) She knows Ukraine since many years – as well as the whole system as she studied in Leipzig during GDR times. She had various leading posts in Deutschlandfunk and had worked also for a while as press & communication director for the German Parliament (Bundestag). Several times rewarded prestigious journalism prices, she is high on a list of self-proclaimed media critics from German nationalist or Russian troll orientation. If someone stands not for fake news, it is her. BBC from London raised the same issue.

It is indeed not easy to fight for the rights of the prison inmates in Donezk and Luhansk. While the Ombudswoman of Ukraine manages transports of prison inmates to normal correction centers in Ukraine from Donezk, she did not yet from Luhansk. But to stand for the rule of law which includes human treatment for prisoners, above for those who have served their time, is a permanent request to every responsible lawyer, journalist and pf course politician. In this context, the problem should be seized e.g. by the European Parliament, the EEAS – EU Diplomatic Service and all other EU politicians who from time to time are on their pilgrimages to Moscow.